The Link between Wildfires and Precipitation in Afr

The Link between Wildfires and Precipitation in Afr Ziming Ke

1. Introduction: Why Important Ø Significant emission amount Mean annual fire emissions (g C m-2 year− 1) (Van der Werf et al. , 2006) Ø Vast amounts of Area Burned Mean annual are burned (Giglio et al. , 2013)

1. Introduction: Background • Little research focuses on Africa • African emissions accounted for 49% of the total southern hemisphere and South America contributed another 13% (Van der Werf et al. , 2006) • With respect to burned area, A gradual decrease trend in NHAF and a gradual increase in SHAF. Most burned area is Savanna (Giglio et al. , 2013) • The Peak months of burning and emissions is different in NHAF and SHAF (Liousse et al, 2010)

Monsoon System and Fire Season

2. Method and Data • Purpose: find a link between regional climate parameter and Africa wild fires. And there is a bridge between climate and fires. • Data: GFED burned area and CSFR total precipitation data • Method: Separate Africa into NHAF and SHAF; Separate the fire variability into trends and interannual parts. The link between

3. Results: fire season

3. Results: fire trends

Precipitation and Fire climatology

Precipitation and Fire trends ² Averaged precipitation at the first three month of fire season, which can suppress the fire ü A plausible link at NHAF : the blue lines ü No clear link in SHAF

q Whether this link between precipitation and fires in NHAF still exits in interannual variability band ?

First EOF Spatial Pattern Trends are removed before analysis

² Two blue lines are similar but with different frequencies. ² Precipitation has higher frequency than fire data Fire first PCs ² AR 1 model can link them together

3. Results: AR 1 model

4. conclusion v Precipitation is a primary force to drive NHAF fires and lead one year v The bridge to link the two is AR 1 model